Dead or Alive?

I was born dead. The doctor did nothing to resuscitate me. The hospital staff saw nothing wrong with my vital signs. I was a healthy newborn. But I was dead in sin, born in iniquity. The nurses could do nothing to save me from the wickedness that was in my heart. I spent the first twelve years of my life believing I was alive when the truth was far from it. Paul wrote to the Romans, “The wages of sin is death…” (Romans 6:23, ESV). I was a sinner separated from God by an impossible void. I could not save myself. I had no hope. In my seventh grade year, I immersed myself in worldly pleasures. I hung out with the wrong people at school. I did not go to church or read my Bible. I constantly rebelled against my parents. But God allowed me to fall so that He alone could pull me up. A pastor from a local church visited our home in November of 2001. My parents explained to him the difficulties they were having with me. He took me aside and we discussed my situation. He clearly showed me the wretchedness of my own heart and compared it to the holiness of God. The Holy Spirit opened my eyes to the fact that God required perfect righteousness from me, but because I broke His law, I would be justly punished in Hell for eternity. Then the pastor revealed the glorious Gospel, “But God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us”(Romans 5:8). Jesus Christ, the perfect Son of God, born of a virgin, died for my sins and rose on the third day, and if I would repent and trust in Him, He would save me. That night God lifted me out of the darkness of my sin into the light of His holiness. I did not deserve forgiveness, I could not earn it, but God chose to be gracious toward me. Paul continued in Romans six,”…but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23). The Bible makes it clear that true Christians are promised eternal life in Heaven. Because Christ paid my debt when He died at Calvary, I am no longer required to go to Hell. His righteousness is imparted to me. The Holy Spirit lives in me, guiding me in the sanctification process and assuring me of the reward to come. The Apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesians, “In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of His glory” (Ephesians 1:13-14). That is the story of my second birth, my live birth. I heard and believed, and now I am living to glorify my God and worship Him forever.